Often with relationships they lack natural break points that would cause the two parties to go their separate ways, this is not the cause when you find someone you really like while travelling. There are constant decisions about where to go next, plans that have already been made and these don’t always plan out to keep you together. However, with a little bit of persistence it doesn’t matter to much about what the original plan was supposed to be.
So it happened, we kissed and we both liked each other I was sure of that now but the time was coming to split up. Holly had plans with her friends and I had plans with mine. Also we had one extra day booked at the hostel, which seems so stupid to have even worried about that now. Anyway we sorted it all out because it turns out Holly didn’t really want to go to some party and we both wanted to stay together a little longer. This is where a big thank you goes out to Gale and Phoebe for putting up with a the two of us being infatuated with each other for the rest of the trip.
The first memory I have of the start of our quartets travels was on a boat trip to some other part of Thailand. It was a rough journey and I was feeling very ill, but as often is true in life give a person purpose and there is nothing they can’t overcome. This was the first time in my life that I had cared more about someone else’s hardship than my own, not to say I hadn’t had empathy before but it can be terrifying when you care about a body so much and you aren’t in control of that body. Needless to say I didn’t feel sick for very long as I had someone to care for and Holly felt the same, this is the first of many times that we would be each other’s support network. We landed in Krabi, and found a hostel it was here that in this hostel that when I look back at it I first felt like a couple. We went to wander about and met an American police officer, Dana, and an English couple on their honeymoon, conversation started and we went for dinner at a Korean restaurant, I think this was the first time I’d had Korean food. Holly helped me order and it was great (although I do believe it backfired but this is undecided) Dana paid for everyone’s meal because we were strapped backpackers. These little kindnesses and connections are one of the reasons that people love travelling and if I could recommend one thing about travelling it would be find a Holly, she is bar none the best at making these connections, highlighting their importance and always paying on the good will , one of many reasons I fell in love with her.
This is when we went to the beach with a few beers and had conversations by the waves however Phoebe was tired and Holly went back to the hostel with her. This is where I show that I was still a nineteen year old boy, and with our two new friends Gale and I went to a bar. They kept buying drinks, I was not feeling well but peer-pressure was still a strong motivator back then. I tried to keep up and stop the Korean food from coming up. It was Jager that got me in the end, I knew I was going to throw up as soon I smelt it but tried to drink it anyway, a stupid decision but I’d made a lot of good ones recently so it wasn’t the worst way to balance the books. I threw up all over the table outside and declared that my night was over. After taking myself back to the hostel and feeling very sober all of a sudden I crawled into bed with Holly, we talked and went to bed.
I woke up the next day very abruptly, jumped from the top bunk of the bed and throw up again in the middle of the room and over a lot of Holly’s clothes. I know, I know she’s still with me, what a trooper! I did pay the wash everything but I’m not sure if that made up for it. I felt awful in the morning, worse than just hungover, this is why I blamed the Korean food earlier. Anyway I Holly looked after me gave me some random medicine to make me feel better, which I hadn’t taken in years, and went to bed. Holly took Gale and Phoebe to one of her favourite places in Thailand, Tonsai Beach. She sent me loads of pictures and talked but this is her part of the story so I’ll let her tell it. When you read this Holly, just to let you know that I am going to go to Tonsai with you one day and it will be all the sweeter for the wait. After a day out of action I was feeling a lot better the next day. The plan was to meet up with Jammi, the climbing guru, to go climbing. Surprise, surprise. I’d never been before but it was something that I had always been interested in. As it turned out I would spend a year of my life at university doing it, and become one of the few sports I still have a passion for as of writing this. It was fun and Holly had accidentally changed my life, she’s very good at that.
There isn’t a load to say about the rest of our journey throughout Southern Thailand, just motorbikes, good food, good people and as it turns out the most important person in the world to me. Our time was coming up, Holly was going to a month-long yoga course in India and I was going to Cambodia with Gale. In a normal story this would be the end but it wasn’t. So we headed back to Bangkok for our final couple of days. We went to the strip on Gales request I had to the best time dancing in the street, drenched in sweat with Holly. Holly bought me a snacks for my bus trip to Cambodia and I ran away scared to say goodbye, something that I regret for not saying how much I enjoyed all the time we had together and also not because if I had said goodbye it might have been true.
